- When I was 17 years old
I was living in Canada as a teenager.
My father was screwed over by a business partner
in Hong Kong.
Now, my father is a very kind man,
very trusting man,
so he was the one who signs on every dot
and him and this business partner,
they start a business together,
an international trade business,
many many years ago,
and over the years my dad was working very, very hard,
very, very hard, does most of the work
and one day the business partner basically took off,
took all the money and because my dad was the guarantor
for everything and that left him about
a million dollars in debt.
A million dollars in debt.
That wiped out my father financially, emotionally.
He was never the same man again after that.
He lost all his confidence,
he could never bounce back,
and as a result I started early.
That's how I got pushed into business
because I needed to take care of my mom
as the only child in my family.
And from that incident I said to myself;
I'll never be screwed over by a business partner,
that I never wanna be like my dad,
I don't want to repeat the same mistake that he made.
But guess what, I did.
Over the years I've had so many different partnerships.
Some are very, very good partnerships,
some are horrible partnerships.
If you're watching this video maybe you've just been
screwed over by a business partner,
someone that you trust,
someone that you called a friend for a long time,
or maybe you've been betrayed by someone
that you care for.
Someone you thought would never betray you
and you feel hurt and you feel lost.
Well I wanna share my experience with you
and how I overcame some of these things
and maybe it will help you as well.
My first business partner.
At the time I was just getting started in my career
and I wanted to promote my business
and I printed out all these business cards,
free business cards because I couldn't afford
to get business cards, right,
and I was living in a small condo with my mom
and I would run up and down the building
and I would put the business card under people's doorway
trying to get some business,
maybe I could get some business that way,
I didn't know, I didn't know marketing,
I would put flyers in the building.
It's stupid thinking about it.
And I got a call and I thought oh great,
I got some business and the gentleman,
the older gentleman was actually a web master
saying I saw your business card, what do you do?
And I'm like hey, well, good I got some business.
He said why don't you come to my place, meet with me?
So I went down to his floor in the same building
and we talked and I shared with him what I do
and I was selling him.
He said you know what?
Why are you running around giving away business card?
You should have a website.
I said a website, like how does that work?
Because he builds websites for people.
So I borrow money from my relatives to pay him
to start this website.
I thought great, that I'd only to knock on people's door
and try to stuff business card under the doorway,
maybe that would get some business.
And afterwards he came up with an idea,
hey, instead of doing that,
why don't you do this business instead?
And he was pitching me different business ideas,
I thought this is great.
I could be successful faster,
I could make money faster and be able to provide for my mom,
and I trusted him.
Long story short; back and forth, back and forth.
I was sinking money into the ventures.
I was borrowing money, maxing on my credit card,
put all the money into it,
someone that I trust.
I trust him so much, he was an older gentleman
so sometimes he might be building websites and stuff,
he's so busy,
I would have mom cook dinner and I would bring
the extra dinner to him.
Long story short; we put in tens of thousands of dollars,
I got into tens of thousands of dollars in debt
trusting a man like that.
One day I wanted to see the progress of what we've done.
I went to his floor, the door was not locked.
I opened the door, the place was empty.
He took all the money,
scammed me out of all the money
that we have and disappeared.
The things that I sweared I would never let that happen,
what happened to my dad, guess what?
It happened to me.
I was so mad at myself,
I was so pissed off at him that I wanted to kill him.
Literally, I wanted to kill him.
But I couldn't find him.
I've never seen him since then.
I took upon myself that why am I so stupid?
Why do I trust him?
Because I didn't know I was being guided,
I was misled by greed if you think about it
because I wanted to make money without doing the work
and that's the perfect victim for him.
So I took upon myself that I'm going to educate myself.
No matter what it takes,
I'm gonna learn how internet works,
how marketing works,
how business works
and I remember back them I bought a course by Corey Rudl
called Insider Secrets Of Marketing On The Internet,
two binders like this.
Five, six hundred pages of content.
My English wasn't that good.
I went through that entire thing and locked myself in a room
in two days, in two days,
and I've never stopped since then
because, yes, it's his fault to scam me
but it's also my fault to believe in him
and being so naive and not knowing what I do.
So I learnt a lesson from that.
So maybe you're thinking why did they do that to me?
But look within.
Who trusted that person?
Why did I trust that person?
I was trying to take a shortcut.
What can you learn from it?
And I learned from it,
I learned from it.
So don't beat yourself up.
Second business partner,
and now a few years later.
This partner I met on-line.
He saw what I was doing and I was growing.
We formed a company together doing website conversion
and website optimization for company's entrepreneurs
and we signed an agreement.
Basically a 30/70% split
any revenue that comes in.
I will keep 70%, he would keep 30%
and he would help me with the traffic,
he would help me with the website and certain things.
I said great, I will do the selling and marketing
and write all the copy and do all of that.
What ended up happening is
I ended up doing 99% of the work.
I was the one that's carrying the weight of the company.
I was talking with the clients,
I was the one that's doing the work.
He was doing very, very little, very little
and I was paying him 30%, 30%, 30%
to a point where I was like this is not working.
He's not doing anything,
I'm doing all the work, I'm taking all the risk, right?
Why am I giving a big chunk of my revenue away
to someone who's not doing the work?
So I confronted him.
I said this is not working.
I wanna end this partnership.
And he said well, you cannot end this partnership.
And I said what do you mean?
Well we signed a deal, you can't just walk away.
I said I can't do this,
we gotta change the percentage.
No, you gotta keep paying me,
otherwise I'll take legal action.
More than that I said no, I'm not gonna do that.
So what happened back then was the guy was
actually threatening me.
He said if you end the partnership,
'cause he has access to our customer base,
our list, our database,
I'm gonna email all your customers and tell them
that you are not an honorable man.
That he's gonna frame me as a bad person
and destroy my reputation.
Now, what would you do in that scenario?
What would you do?
Someone that I have a partnership with,
I thought he would do the work,
I trusted him.
I gave him away 30% of my company.
So now what?
I end up the one, again,
doing all the work, carrying the company
and I couldn't sleep for many, many nights.
It was very, very stressful.
I ended up shutting down the entire company.
I said fuck it.
I said if you're gonna email my customers,
email my customers.
I shut down the entire thing.
So all the revenues coming in,
all that, I just let go of all of that
and I start something new.
Now that's difficult.
That's very, very difficult.
So, maybe you have a bad business partner right now
and you feel like,
it's like the end of the world.
How do I get rid of this person?
And you feel like oh my God it's gonna affect
my employees, it's gonna affect the people that
work with our vendors, our customers,
or this person is like holding you by the balls.
Let me tell you this.
That partner, the second partner that I had,
nowhere to be seen and yet I'm here today.
Yes, I did the work, I did almost all the work.
You do the work, you get the knowledge,
you get the experience,
no-one can take that away from you.
You can always build something again,
always build something again.
That other person trying to shortcut,
trying to take advantage of you,
they will still do that.
People like that don't succeed long term,
they never become successful.
I know it hurts,
I know it might cost you a lot of money right now,
I know that.
It's difficult.
It is very, very difficult
but I learned.
So from there I let go of that, guess what?
The new company that I started,
more successful than the company I closed down with him.
Third business partner,
happened recently,
was so disappointed.
This guy came to me
a couple of months away from bankruptcy,
literally a couple of months away from bankruptcy.
I helped him.
I turned his life around,
taught him a skill,
pay off his debt.
Treat him like family.
Invite him to my home.
Invite him to my company.
After working together for a period of time
what I found out is he was
doing a lot of reputation destruction,
a lot of things behind my back.
Lying, deceiving, spreading rumors
about my company, with many of my students.
Was I disappointed?
Absolutely.
That's a business partner right there.
But I learned from that.
It doesn't matter what you're going through,
let me tell you this:
Give it time.
It might feel like you'll never get out of it.
It might feel this is such a big deal.
Three months, six months, nine months,
a year, two years, looking back,
10 years, looking back you're like hmm.
It may be just like a bleep.
It's not that big of a deal.
You're still you.
You'll still make it,
you'll still be successful.
The business partner,
the three business partner that I had,
the bad ones,
where are they?
I'm here, I'll always be here.
Those guys?
Irrelevant, history.
No-one remembers them,
no-one cares about them.
You shouldn't care about them.
As much as it hurts,
as much as it bothers you,
as much as you wanna kill that son of a bitch,
I get that,
let it go.
Winners are winners, losers will always be losers.
Let it go.
But next time when you select a business partner
be way more selective.
At the the end of the day you should take responsibility.
I take responsibility.
I chose the person.
I chose that person to be my business partner.
It is like how many of you of you had bad meals?
I've had bad meals, you've had bad meals.
Do you still eat?
You still eat.
Just because a couple people
lied to you, betrayed your trust,
it's not everybody.
I've also had some very successful partnerships,
I'm glad I have those partnerships
and they're phenomenal, right, enriched my life.
And that's great.
Working on projects with great people,
that's wonderful, right.
It's not like oh then I don't trust anybody anymore.
I never want a partner anymore.
No, you need to collaborate.
You need to work with people.
So as disappointing as those incidents,
learn from those incidents.
And trust me, five, 10 years from now looking back,
those incidents, the first one?
It turned me into an obsessed learner.
The first business partner turned me into
an obsessed learner, right.
The second business partner taught me
the importance of having team,
not counting on one person.
The third business partner taught me
about legal structure, protecting yourself.
It made everything that I do stronger,
it made me stronger.
And it's great.
I don't recommend anyone to go through this
but sometimes you gotta go through this
to become who you are capable of,
who you could be.
So that's my story.
So if you've ever been screwed over by a business partner,
comment below, share your story with us,
share your story with me,
I wanna hear them.
And what have you learned from it?
Put aside anger, put aside the rage.
What have you learned from this?
You might say, oh I learned he's an asshole.
No, seriously, what have you learned from this?
What was your takeaway?
There's some good in there,
I know there's some good in there.
In spite of how bad the scenario is,
what could you learn from this?
If you can find those couple key lessons
you can learn from it,
then next time you won't repeat the same mistake.
Right?
So share your story with me,
comment below.